The bomb exploded like a dusty thunderclap directly underneath the front left tire of the U.S. Army MaxxPro truck, sending the tall, roughly 20-ton vehicle lurching at least 10 feet forward and scattering chunks of the outer hull like amputated body parts.

It was March 19, 2011, in the Pakhab-e-Shana in eastern Afghanistan’s breadbasket Logar Province. The bomb, later estimated at 250 pounds, had targeted a convoy belonging to the Army’s 10th Mountain Division carrying humanitarian aid to the impoverished village.

What happened next was either the direct consequence of the MaxxPro’s special design, or the expected result of a bomb striking any U.S. military armored vehicle. That distinction lies at the heart of a months-long debate that could shape the direction of American vehicle development.

Read the rest at AOL Defense.

Oshkosh photo.

The U.S. Army just took a big step closer to getting a brand-new, high-tech ride. Yesterday the Army announced the three companies that will continue to develop the new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, a sort of blend between today’s workhorse Humvee and the bomb-resistant MRAP trucks that have saved so many lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lockheed Martin, AM General and Oshkosh Defense each received around $30 million to refine their JLTV prototypes ahead of a final selection 27 months from now.

At stake in the seven-year-old competition: up to 50,000 trucks for the Army and another 5,000 for the Marines, at a cost of $250,000 apiece. The nearly $14-billion program is one of the few big, near-term prizes in Pentagon budgets squeezed by war costs and the economic downturn.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Via English Russia

From the always-fun English Russia, a photo gallery featuring Soviet tanks destroyed in battle in World War II.

Among others, I spotted T-34s, IS-2s and even a U.S.-made Lend-Lease Sherman.

The Army’s next truck should be smart, flexible, user-friendly, partially autonomous and affordable. In other words, the automotive equivalent of a gadget from Apple. At a trade conference in Virginia on Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Stephen Farmen, the chief of U.S. Army transportation, held up an iPhone. “How do we put the kind of power and technology like this into a wheeled vehicle and hit the right price point?” Farmen asked, according to a report by National Defense.

The “i-Tactical Wheeled Vehicle,” as Farmen called it, is still still years away. The Army just finished buying tens of thousands of medium transport trucks and mine-resistant battlefield transports. The branch’s new Joint Tactical Light Vehicle, a Humvee replacement, is in the final stages of design. A truck with iPhone-like capabilities designed from the wheels up might have to wait for the next round of truck replacements in 15 years or so. It’s possible by then that the Army won’t want or need a truck with smartphone-like qualities. After all, the military does tend to get caught up in the tech trend of the moment. Virtual-reality helmets, anyone?

Read the rest at Danger Room.

After I wrote about being bombed while riding in a MaxxPro Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicle in Afghanistan, a representative of Navistar, the vehicle’s manufacturer, emailed me to ask if I would mind answering a few questions for the company newsletter.

The exchange is copied below. Since I never heard back from the guy, I’m assuming he never printed my responses.

Q: Can you give me a quick summary of your experience with our trucks? I’d like to find out about where you’ve ridden in them, where you were going, what was the mission, etc.

A: I’ve ridden in almost every MRAP variant — and other mine-resistant vehicles — in the course of seven years reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan and across Africa.

Q: If you want to add something about the ride/comfort (lack thereof) please do; I’d like to know what people think of our vehicles overall.

A: MRAPs are not comfortable. In fact, I hate them — not only for their cramped interiors and many sharp metal edges and the way the seat cushions get flattened or their frames bent after repeated use, but also because MRAPs and other Army vehicles are basically bomb magnets. Which is, of course, why International and other designers produced the MRAP in the first place — to make it more likely the occupants of an ambushed vehicle will survive the attack. I’ve been bombed or nearly bombed in MRAPs twice since 2009, and while I’m grateful to have emerged mostly unscathed, I’ve learned that in a warzone I’d rather walk 15 miles up a mountain with a rucksack on my back than ride two miles in an MRAP or any other vehicle.

Q: You’ve been in our trucks during an firefight and an IED attack, can you tell me a little bit about those? You can pick to talk about both, or just one, up to you.

A: In Afghanistan, I was attacked while riding in a MaxxPro belonging to the 10th Mountain Division twice: once in 2009, again two years later. In 2009 in Baraki Barak, an IED destroyed the MaxxPro behind mine in a convoy and then the Taliban opened fire with rockets and machine guns. The Americans and their attached Afghan National Army fired back — the Americans from their MRAPs, the Afghans from their Nissan pickup trucks. The firefight lasted 10 minutes or so before the Apache helicopter showed up and ended things rather quickly.

In 2011, I was in the rearmost seat of a MaxxPro on a patrol outside the village of Pakhab-e-Shana when a large IED exploded underneath the front of the vehicle, destroying everything but the crew compartment. Five soldiers were hurt — two of them badly. I and one other soldier, both of us sitting in the rear, were mostly unhurt. One officer was injured because he had not buckled his safety belt and flew around inside the compartment as the blast lifted us in the air and threw us 15 feet down the road.

Q: What did it feel like inside the truck?

A: A loud sound, a violent motion, dust in the air, impact as we struck the ground, then incredible silence … followed by screaming.

Q: Did you feel safe inside the truck? Did the crew?

A: Prior to the attack, I felt safe in MRAPs. Today I do not feel safe in any Army vehicle in a combat zone. I feel safer on foot.

Q: After all that you’ve been through, would you ride in another MaxxPro? What things would you change about it? What do the soldiers say about the MaxxPro?

A: I’ll ride in a MaxxPro or other MRAP when required to do so — but never voluntarily.

Q: Most days, people at Navistar don’t get the opportunity to interact with their customers and it’s easy to forget that people are counting on our trucks everyday overseas. If you could tell the people at Navistar anything about their truck or their work, what would it be?

A: Your trucks will keep people alive when they are bombed, but the vehicles also attract attacks. It’s a Catch-22 situation. You need safer vehicles like the MaxxPro because you’re riding in vehicles in the first place.

Texas Armoring photo.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — A 10-minute drive away from the Alamo, small teams on the factory floor of Texas Armoring Corporation work deliberately, turning everyday civilian vehicles into armored workhorses for the world’s governments and business executives. The company is growing rapidly, and one reason is Mexico’s drug war.

An adjacent building under construction will double available manufacturing space. TAC’s workforce grew 30 percent last year to about 40 employees. That’s enough to produce around 80 cars per year. Reality television networks have been calling, attracted to the company’s tattooed workers, youngish executives and at-risk clientele.

Displayed inside the building’s lobby are spiked road tacks that can be dropped out of rear compartments, armor components dented by rounds fired from AK-47 assault rifles, and a black SUV driver’s side door with 2-inch thick bulletproof glass chewed up by ballistic impacts. Next, is a tire with a section cut out of it, showing hardened run-flat inserts underneath the rubber.

The armoring process is fairly straight-forward. A vehicle is sawed down to its frame with cutting torches. The frame is then wrapped in a combination of Kevlar, steel and polyethylene composite plates (industry term: “Spectra Shield”) before the original fabrics and interior panels are restored. Eventually, at a price of around $80,000 or more — not including cost of the vehicle, and without options like smoke shields and digital video recorder systems — a client should be protected from rounds sized up to 7.62 millimeters.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Type 90. Creative Commons photo.

According to Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan is planning on slashing the number of main battle tanks from a 790 to 400. The cuts would result in a savings of just over a billion dollars annually, which would then go towards reinforcing the Nansei islands. This would result in a national tank force less than half stipulated in the 1995 defense planning guidelines.

Wikipedia lists the number of Japanese tanks as 902, broken down as follows:

Type 74: 561
Type 90:341
Type 10: 0

Wikipedia numbers for Japanese equipment are generally pretty accurate, and I assume these numbers were accurate at some point. The discrepancy between the Yomiuri’s numbers and Wikipedia’s is probably due to Type 74s being phased out. The Type 74 is roughly in the same league as the American M60A3, Russian T-72, and British Chieftain. It’s an old, obsolete design and really should have been retired a long time ago. Two reasons why it hasn’t so far are a flat defense budget and a budgetary emphasis on the ballistic missile defense mission.

The planned cuts mean the Type 74 will be phased out completely, and their numbers not replaced. The Type 90 is still fairly new, so one can assume that all of them will remain in service for the foreseeable future. However, under the new plan, this would only leave room for a 60 tank purchase of the new Type 10.

Japan maintains two basic types of divisions: infantry divisions, which have a small, battalion-sized complement of tanks, and tank divisions. Implementation of the planned cuts almost certainly means the disbandment of the only tank division, the 7th Armored Division, as keeping it would hog all the tanks and tie them all up in Hokkaido. (The 7th AD is an anachronism now anyway, without the threat of a Soviet invasion of Hokkaido.) My guess then is that Japan will parcel out what tanks that remain to the infantry divisions. 400 tanks divided by 60 (per battalion) = 6 1/2 battalions. That’s enough to equip 6 infantry divisions and one understrength training battalion.

That’s fine, but Japan currently has 9 infantry divisions, not to mention several separate brigades.

Japan doesn’t need a lot of tanks — terrain-wise, Japan is a mixture of extremes not conducive to tank warfare: narrow streets in built-up areas and forested mountains cut through with equally narrow roads. In an all-arms Japanese ground force, tanks should probably be de-emphasized in order to make room for more helicopters and engineers. But is it wise for any industrialized country lower tank inventories to the level of three tanks for every one million people, especially one that that is separated from 3,600,000 active duty PLA and NKPA only a short skip across the Sea of Japan?

Megadrive. MTV photo.

If you’ve ever seen Armando Iannucci’s brilliant political satire In the Loop, a film with strong Danger Room ties, you might recognize L.A.-based comedian Johnny Pemberton. He played the very young American official assigned to receive a crass and impatient British government spin doctor (played by Peter Capaldi) during the run-up to an Iraq War-style conflict. Pemberton followed that brief but memorable performance with another gig that’s right up our readers’ alley. As host of the new MTV show Megadrive, Pemberton hilariously test-drives, and often demolishes, a wide variety of heavy vehicles, including some of the latest military hardware. Danger Room caught up with Pemberton via email.

Danger Room: Why Megadrive? What is it about big freakin’ machines that interests you?

Johnny Pemberton: It’s something so different and apart from any everyday experience. You have these massive or fast or totally bizarre vehicles that most people will never get to see or touch, let alone drive. They’re just absolutely captivating. Loud as all Hell, amazingly powerful and able to very easily kill you and/or anyone near you by accident. I get bored very easily and often have trouble paying attention, but not around a tank. It forces you to pay really good attention.

DR: What kind of military hardware have you gotten to drive?

JP: M-1 SEP battle tank, JCB HMEE [a military-grade, armored backhoe -- ed.], and an Armored Personnel Carrier from Manuel Noriega’s army that’s now used by the sheriff’s special operations unit in a little town in Georgia.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

With the latest delays, it now seems likely the Joint Strike Fighter program will take 21 years from concept to combat-readiness. And that’s all-too-typical for a major U.S. weapon program; the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft and the F-22 stealth jet took just as long. These decades-long developments aren’t just a waste of time, effort, and cash. They can be self-defeating. “When systems finally reach the users, the world has changed around them,” Bill Sweetman warns at Ares. If the military isn’t careful, it could pour hundreds of billions of dollars into weapons that are obsolete the day they enter service.

It’s for that reason that a small cadre of Air Force officers, including Lt. Col. Dan War, advocated a new, “fast, inexpensive, simple and tiny” approach to buying weapons, aiming to reduce 20-year development cycles to just three years by using mostly off-the-shelf components. The “FIST” concept saw its first big success with the MC-12W spy plane, which went from blueprint to combat in just 13 months.

Now the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants to do the same for Army ground vehicles. Darpa’s Adaptive Vehicle Make initiative means to replace old-school, metal-bending prototyping with new, speedy computer modeling taking a fraction of the time. “We look forward to tackling some very challenging fundamental problems that, once solved, offer the potential to truly revolutionize the way we make products in the defense industry and beyond,” AVM manager Paul Eremenko said.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Creative Commons photo, Flickr user Mr. T in DC

Coverage of Wednesday’s hostage drama at the Silver Spring, Maryland headquarters of the Discovery Channel produced an intriguing picture of a Mine Resistant Armored Protection (MRAP) vehicle parked outside the cable company building. This begged the obvious question: who did it belong to?

The MRAP apparently belongs to the FBI. Flickr user Mr. T in D.C. snapped the shot above at “4th and F Streets, NW, in Washington D.C.” in June of this year. It appears to be the very same vehicle, or at least is identically configured and similarly numbered.

The U.S. government has taken seriously the possibility that Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) could be used in the Washington D.C. area. The presidential motorcade, for example, blasts anti-cell phone jammers whenever it exits the White House — to the annoyance of tourists waiting for a tour of the presidential building and grounds.

Improvised Explosive Devices have accounted for around 800 of the roughly 1,100 U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan. To counter these increasingly-lethal bombs, the U.S. military is spending billions of dollars on blast-resistant vehicles specially tailored for Afghan terrain. But in addition to their high cost, the complex new vehicles can be a logistical burden.

Read the rest at Voice of America.